READING, Pa. \u2013\u00a0During its Committee of the Whole meeting Monday night, Reading City Council members and the administration expressed frustration with the Charter Review Commission for referendum questions being put forth for the November general election.<\/p>\n
The Charter Review Commission has submitted 13 ordinances to ask the voters to amend the city charter.<\/p>\n
Councilmembers were critical of the number of questions being put to the voters, and some questioned whether some of the amendments are unconstitutional and would trigger legal action.<\/p>\n
City Solicitor Fred Lachat explained that the problem facing City Council is that they have no choice as to whether the referendum questions will advance to the voters.<\/p>\n
\u00a0\u201cNormally, with an ordinance you have a \u2018yes\u2019 or \u2018no\u2019 vote, but in this case, it\u2019s mandatory that under the charter these (referendum questions) go forward,\u201d Lachat said. \u201cIt\u2019s unfortunate that they put it in the form of an ordinance because it doesn\u2019t make a whole lot of sense for you to be voting on something for which you don\u2019t have a choice.\u201d<\/p>\n
The proposed questions for referendums include whether the city home rule charter should be amended to:<\/p>\n
Create a department of public health.<\/p>\n
Merge the board of ethics with the charter board.<\/p>\n
Prevent a city councilmember from serving as voting members of any municipal authority.<\/p>\n
Limit the term of the city clerk to five years and prevent the individual in the position from holding any office or position in a political party.<\/p>\n
Limit the terms of the members of authorities, boards or commissioners to serving no more than three consecutive terms.<\/p>\n
Prevent a city employee from serving as a voting member of an authority, board or commission.<\/p>\n
Include a statement about equal and inclusive treatment.<\/p>\n
Prevent taxes, fines or other amounts owed to the city from disqualifying\u00a0an individual from appointments to authorities, board, or commissions when satisfactory payment arrangements have been made.<\/p>\n
Direct the city auditor to\u00a0conduct independent forensic audits of all city departments, boards and authorities during each mayoral term.<\/p>\n
Provide\u00a0orientation for new appointees on boards, authorities or commissions.<\/p>\n
Establish a right for\u00a0freedom from toxic trespass.<\/p>\n
Include a preamble with a statement about the preservation and protection of natural resources and the rights of people to clean air, pure water and the preservation of natural resources.<\/p>\n
State that the mayor shall appoint one chief of police, subject to City Council approval.<\/p>\n
Councilmember Rafael Nunez said he is very frustrated with the process.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe agree that we need to deal with so many situations we are facing, but when it comes to all of these at the same time, this is something that we need to be careful,\u201d Nunez said. \u201cI do not agree with many things that I see here. I’m sorry, I’m not going to support this.\u201d<\/p>\n
Councilmember Raymond E. Baker said he wanted to levy a blanket objection to a large portion of the questions.<\/p>\n
\u201cI will be raising my frustration with a lot of these amendments at the next meeting because I do believe some of them are blatantly unconstitutional and I think in violation of many people \u2014both city employees, the city clerks and others\u2019\u2014 rights to free speech if they were implemented,\u201d Baker said. \u201cBut that’s an issue for next week and then for the ballot in November.\u201d<\/p>\n
Council will be discussing the issues at the June 22 Committee of the Whole and again at the following voting meeting.<\/p>\n
Managing Director\u00a0Jack Gombach said the administration had some concerns and offered the example that adding a health department could drastically increase costs to the city budget and ultimately the taxpayers.<\/p>\n
\u201cA fully certified health department is required (by the state) to perform certain duties,\u201d Gombach said. \u201cThis has sort of been the main reason why the county has not launched their own health department, and we do not know what the financial obligation is going to be to make to meet those state mandates, and once we have it, we have to meet that. So, there could be an unknown financial obligation to the taxpayer.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Councilmember Chris Miller said having 13 referendum questions might prevent most voters from taking the time to educate themselves.<\/p>\n
\u201cWill they spend that much time in the voting booth to read and vote correctly, or will they just do an automatic \u2018yes\u2019 or \u2018no\u2019?\u201d Miller asked. \u201cIt\u2019s not fair to the voters.\u201d<\/p>\n
Council President Donna Reed said she is frustrated with the commission and questioned whether the members really thought the questions through.<\/p>\n
\u201cEvery single person on that commission has a responsibility to educate the public because they wanted to serve on it; they weren’t forced to serve on it,\u201d council President Donna Reed said. \u201cSo, get out there and educate the public. We’ll do what we can do. I think it’s incumbent upon us to make our opinions and our statements known because we’re here to serve the public.\u201d<\/p>\n
Councilmember Jaime Baez Jr. said he appreciated councilmember concerns, but reminded them that each councilmember appointed one commission member.<\/p>\n
Lachat also reminded council that it, too, can pass legislation to ask voters to amend the charter.<\/p>\n
Lachat said Lancaster and Allentown \u2014 which have home rule charters \u2014 do not have charter review commissions, as they are not required by the state.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo, we could consider that option, too,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"READING, Pa. \u2013\u00a0During its Committee of the Whole meeting Monday night, Reading City Council members and the administration…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":220118,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[95945,1089,78337,2716,5195,3066,1091,1094,79545,128,1095,130,129],"class_list":["post-220117","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-reading","tag-charter-review-commission","tag-chris-miller","tag-department-of-public-health","tag-donna-reed","tag-fred-lachat","tag-jack-gombach","tag-jaime-baez","tag-rafael-nunez","tag-raymond-e-baker","tag-reading-city","tag-reading-city-council","tag-reading-city-headlines","tag-reading-city-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/220117","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=220117"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/220117\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/220118"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=220117"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=220117"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=220117"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}